It was the rain that found them first. A miserable, bone-chilling rain that had started as a mist before thickening into a steady, gray drizzle. It clung to the torn cloaks of the two men, turning the war-ravaged landscape into a vast sea of mud.
Neither of them paid any heed to the weather. They were too busy navigating the corpses, each body marked by the same banner as their own. They dragged themselves onward with broken bodies and shattered spirits, the sole survivors of a mercenary company that no longer existed.
The Black Banner had been a sorry excuse for a company even on its best days. Now, it was nothing more than a tattered memory, wiped out by an unseen force for an unknown reason. All the survivors knew was the ache in their bones and the hollow void their comrades had left behind.
Despite all this, they walked.
They walked as the growing sea of mud began swallowing the remains of their company around them. They never turned back, never stopped, because they knew they couldn’t afford to. If they stopped, they would die. Adrenaline and shock could only take them so far; sheer willpower was the only thing keeping them upright.
They followed a path that was more suggestion than road until they saw a flickering light glowing between the trees. It promised warmth and shelter, and to their relief, it did not deceive them.
The light led them to a small village huddled against the gloom like a frightened animal, its few buildings tired and weary. The streets were empty. It was silent—too silent—as if the village and the two men were waiting to see who would kill the silence first. The men had seen enough killing, and the village was too innocent, so the silence was left to linger as they made their way to the heart of the settlement.
There stood an inn, a sagging timber-and-thatch building with a faded sign swinging mournfully in the wind: The Wounded Stag.
Inside, the air was thick with the scent of damp wool and burning wood. A fire smoldered in the hearth, offering more smoke than warmth, a sullen amber eye in the gloom. The innkeeper, a man named Rulld, moved like a ghost behind his bar, polishing a mug with a rag that had seen better decades. He didn’t speak. His eyes avoided contact as if a shared glance was a currency he couldn’t afford.
There were other patrons in the inn, but they acted more like empty husks; the place was a chamber of somber misery. And in that chamber, still dripping from a day’s walk in the rain, sat a gnome.
He had chosen a corner table with his back against the wall, taking in everything and everyone. He was small of stature but radiated a bitterness so potent it seemed to leave a taste in the air. He was wrapped in a strange, hooded jacket that, on closer inspection, was not made of leather, but of intricately woven bark and leaves. A cane of polished wood leaned against his chair, and a palm-sized bronze locket rested on the table beside a half-empty mug of bittersweet cider.
The most striking thing about him, however, were his eyes. They held a faint but distinct tint of lilac, and they missed nothing. This was Nym.
The pair of travelers entering the inn were less two men and more one shared wreckage. They leaned on each other for support, their movements a symphony of pain.
One was a human with unkempt hair and the wild, unfocused eyes of a man who listens to voices no one else can hear. Though he mumbled to himself, no words were audible. His companions in the Black Banner knew him as Gassi, an eccentric whose mad ramblings often held a kernel of unnerving truth. Beneath his worn clothes, the dull gleam of studded leather sparked in the firelight.
His crutch was another man who might have been beautiful once. Even beneath the grime and the tarnish of his armor, there was a fineness to his features, but there was no joy in his eyes now—only exhaustion. He had traded his sword for a brutal-looking flail, and he carried a shield emblazoned with the crest of a golden eagle against a field of blue and white. This was Aurelio.
They staggered to a table, a quiet recognition passing between them and the gnome. They were strangers, mostly, but now they were brothers in ruin.
A moment later, the door opened a final time.
An orc filled the frame. His size—no, his presence—seemed to shrink the already small room. He wore his hair in a tight topknot, in the style of the eastern sword-saints, and his ears were slightly more pointed than most of his kind. Scales glittered like dull jewels on his arms and beneath his eyes, betraying a mixed heritage. Despite his ragged clothes, a fine longsword hung at one hip and a shortsword at the other. Large tusks jutted from his lower jaw. He was known among the Banner for his love of dueling, a reputation not always earned through friendly contests. This was Zogg.
Nym, the gnome, broke the silence, his voice raspy. He beckoned to the orc. “Sit down, comrade.”
Zogg grunted and took a seat. His eyes swept the room, assessing the three other survivors.
“So,” Nym said, his gaze lingering on each of them. “We are the only ones who lived? What do you know? What did you see?” He sat fiddling with his leafy jacket, a manic, obsessive gesture of mending something only he could see was broken.
“The gates of yesterday were covered in the fourth color,” Gassi mumbled, staring at a knot in the wooden table.
Aurelio sighed, rubbing his temple. “I don’t know what he’s talking about, but he saved my life. I was on my way to meet my ancestors, everything was dark and… and then his hands… they glowed.”
“He has been babbling since?” Nym asked dryly.
“Yes. But if you listen to a piece of what he says instead of the whole, sometimes it makes a kind of sense,” Aurelio replied, leaning his shield against his chair. “The only problem is figuring out which piece you should pick.”
Zogg looked at Gassi, a flicker of recognition in his eyes. “I know you. You must be Gassi. The general’s advisor?” He extended a hand.
Gassi looked at the offered hand for a long moment before taking it. “I’m Zogg”. Zogg said as he took Gassi’s hand.
Zogg nodded to the others. “you are Aurelio. And the gnome?”
“Nym,” the gnome supplied. “I would say it is a pleasure, but I would rather have met under… other… circumstances. Still, it is good not to be alone.”
“Does anyone know what actually happened?” Aurelio asked, his voice low. “One moment, the company was there. The next… nothing. Just fog and screams.”
“There were no centaurs,” Gassi declared abruptly. “The mission was a lie. It was a singing thief.” He looked at them as if this explained everything.
Nym pulled out a small notebook and a piece of charcoal, carefully writing down the phrase.
“What do you mean?” Aurelio pressed. “Our scouts reported centaurs for weeks.”
“Not where we were,” Gassi insisted. “Someone wanted the Black Banner gone. And they succeeded.”
A silence fell over the table, heavy and cold as the rain outside. They ate the lukewarm stew Rulld brought them, the quiet broken only by the scrape of spoons against wooden bowls and Gassi’s occasional, incomprehensible whispers. Finally, they paid a few coppers for the right to sleep on the floor of the common room, a small price to avoid the cold and rain for one night.
Sleep did not come as a comfort. It came as an ambush and they didn’t stand a chance.
They woke in the dead of night, not to a single sound, but to a collective, guttural scream of agony. A pain, white-hot and searing, erupted on their bodies. Zogg thrashed, clutching his arm where a symbol now burned like a fresh brand. Across the room, Aurelio cried out, a similar mark glowing on his thigh. Nym, scrambling upright, stared in horror at his own wrist, where an intricate spiral pulsed with fiery light.
In the center of the room, untouched by the brands, knelt Gassi. His hands were cupped before him, bathed in a soft, ethereal light of their own.
Zogg was on his feet in an instant, his shortsword drawn and leveled at Gassi’s chest. “What did you do?!” he snarled, his voice a low growl.
“I did nothing!” Gassi said, holding up his luminous hands. “They just glow. They are not hot. See?”
“Don’t touch me!” Zogg spat, backing away.
Nym, ever the curious one despite the pain, limped forward. He inspected his own raw, weeping mark, then looked at Gassi’s hands. “I do not think he is the cause,” Nym said, his voice tight. “Perhaps a result of it, but not the cause.”
Almost instinctively, Gassi knelt and cast what looked like a healing spell on Nym’s brand.
The effect was instantaneous and horrific. The pain didn’t lessen; it exploded. The brand pulsed violently, the agony so intense Nym cried out and collapsed, clutching his wrist. “I was wrong!!” he gasped. “The intention may have been good, but the result was not!”
Gassi, seeing this, seemed to come to a decision. He reached out and laid his glowing hand on Nym’s arm. “Hmm… maybe if I adjust the flow of the asking?” he whispered, concentrating.
In an instant, an image flooded Nym’s mind. He saw through Gassi’s eyes, felt the mud of the battlefield suck at his boots. He saw a lifeless Aurelio on the ground, and heard Gassi’s voice cry his name as glowing energy poured from his hands and into the fallen man, coaxing life back into his body. The vision lasted only a second but felt like minutes.
Nym fell back, his head reeling. “What did you do to me?” he demanded, pointing a trembling finger at Gassi. “I saw… I saw you heal Aurelio. From your eyes.”
“I can… send things?” Gassi looked at his hands, confused.
“Do not touch me again without asking,” Nym warned, his hand hovering over the hilt of his cane. “We must establish rules. Boundaries.”
Gassi, ignoring the threat, stared at the brands on the others. “It is planar bleed-through,” he announced. “From the First World. A smiling stone.”
The others stared at him, bewildered. But Nym’s lilac eyes narrowed. “By the First World… he’s right,” he whispered, though he couldn’t yet grasp the full meaning. “Something from another world is… affecting us. Could be the Fey…”
Gassi searched his own body frantically but found nothing. He was unmarked, save for his mysteriously glowing hands. They decided to attempt sleep again, resolving to investigate the matter in the morning. However, most of them slept with one eye open that night.
They awoke the next morning to an even deeper mystery. The pulsing pain was gone. The brands themselves had vanished, leaving no trace, not even a scar. It was as if the night of agony had been nothing more than a shared nightmare.
Then they finally noticed it: they were not alone.
Sitting at a table near the cold hearth was a man they had not seen before. He was cloaked and hooded, his face lost in shadow. He brought with him a smell of tree smoke and old parchment. The innkeeper, Rulld, moved about his morning duties as if the hooded man wasn’t there, yet there was no way he could have entered without them knowing. It felt as if he had simply… materialized.
Unfazed, and before the rest of the party could react, Gassi walked up to the stranger and extended a hand. “Hello. I am Gassi.”
The man took his hand. His skin was dry as old paper. “A pleasure, they call me Threadbare,” he said, his voice a rustle of dry leaves. As Gassi leaned in, trying to peer into the cowl, the man spoke again, his voice dropping to a whisper only the madman could hear. “You bleed backward now. Stormhoof left you unfinished.”
The words struck a chord in Gassi. He seemed to understand their strange poetry. The others, gathered around, heard only the last part.
“The First World is not done with you,” Threadbare said, his hidden face turning toward them all. “Not yet.”
“Are you the one we owe for this?” Nym asked, gesturing to his now-unmarked wrist.
Threadbare seemed to chuckle, a sound like stones rubbing together. “Oh no, Nameless One. Neither this mark, nor the one before it, are my doing.”
Nym’s face soured, his knuckles whitening on his cane. “What do you kno—”
Before Nym could finish the question, Threadbare had turned to Aurelio. “Calm your nerves, Master Aurelio.”
Aurelio realized he had been holding his breath. He exhaled sharply, recollecting himself. “Who are you? What do you want from us?”
“I am Threadbare,” the hooded figure responded.
“Yes, we already knew that, Aurelio! Didn’t you listen before?” Gassi chimed in, a hint of mild annoyance in his voice.
“As to what I want from you…” Threadbare continued, unbothered by Gassi’s interruption, “that is the correct question, asked at the wrong time.”
Threadbare paused for a brief moment, tilting his head slightly as if listening to a whisper in his ear. He turned back to the paladin. “I can leave you with this, Aurelio. You were not spared… you were preserved.”
The stranger reached into his robe and handed Zogg a small, smooth disc of wood, about four inches across. Zogg, too stunned to speak, grabbed the disc as if his body acted on its own. He looked down to inspect the object, and when he looked up again, the man was gone. He had not walked away. He was just… gone.
Zogg stared at the blank wooden disc in his hand. Nym, meanwhile, was sketching furiously in his notebook, capturing the image of Threadbare and the riddles before they could escape his memory.
Later that night, the brands returned.
The pain, the pulsing light, the shared agony—it all came back. In the middle of the chaos, a iron mug on their table lifted into the air and began to float.
The party all expectantly flicked their heads toward the madman.
“I’m not doing this… I think?” Gassi said, trying to move the mug with his glowing hands. “No, that’s not my doing!”
While the others argued over whether they were facing Threadbare, a ghost, or an unseen enemy, Nym took a more pragmatic approach. He carved a crude “YES” and “NO” into the table’s surface and addressed the empty air.
“What are you?” Nym asked, eyes flicking around the room. “A ghost? A god?” He paused, glancing at the heavy iron cup levitating in the air. “Not Fey, certainly. That’s pure iron.”
The cup stayed put, but the knife did not. It shot upward, as if seized by an invisible hand, and turned its point downward. With eerie precision, the blade began to carve a third option into the wood. It traced the distinct shape of a Stag. The moment the drawing was complete, the magic released its hold; the knife clattered to the table, and the air instantly grew still.
Silence stretched tight across the room. The party leaned in, eyebrows knit in confusion as they studied the fresh splinters. The symbol meant nothing to them—no known crest, no familiar holy icon.
“A stag?” Zogg grunted, tracing the grooves with a calloused finger so he could look at the others. “Is it a signature? Or a warning?”
Nym didn’t offer a theory. He simply pulled a journal from his pack, scratching a charcoal likeness of the carving onto the parchment alongside his notes on the entity’s behavior. The display of power had left them all rattled; there would be no easy rest tonight. Unwilling to lower their guard, they barricaded the door and agreed to sleep in rotating shifts, keeping one eye on the table and the other on the shadows.
The next morning, the brands had vanished again. As they sat nursing their aching heads and frayed nerves, the inn door burst open.
A messenger, breathless and wild-eyed, rushed in. He scanned the room continuously until he saw Zogg. Bursting forward with determination, he thrust a sealed scroll into the orc’s hands and vanished without a word.
The wax seal bore the proud crest of the Aldori Swordlords. The message inside was a summons, a command to present themselves at the manor of Jamandi Aldori, three days’ travel to the northwest.
With the banner wiped out, nowhere to go and no source of income, the summons seemed like their best bet.
They put the wretched inn behind them. On the first day of their journey, they came upon a dead tree by the roadside. Nailed to its trunk was a tattered, blood-stained Black Banner. At its roots lay a dark pool of dried blood. Carved into the bark was a spiral symbol. Gassi reached out to compare it with the drawing of Nym’s brand. As his fingers brushed Nym’s arm, he muttered something over his shoulder and the vision of the battlefield flashed through the gnome’s mind again, clearer this time.
“I told you to never do that without asking!” Nym shouted. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, trying to dispel the sudden image burned into his mind.
“But I did ask before!” Gassi said. “But I think I asked the wrong question. Or maybe I just got the wrong answ—”
“I don’t know who you asked or what you asked,” Nym interrupted sharply. “From now on, you ask me before you do anything to me. Got it?”
The silence that followed was heavier than the humid air. For the rest of that afternoon, the only sounds were the crunch of boots on gravel and the rustle of wind in the dead grass. Zogg glanced between the two of them, shaking his head, but ultimately chose to say nothing. The camaraderie they had started to build at the inn had evaporated, replaced by a prickly, defensive wall around Nym.
The second day passed in much the same way—a blur of gray hills and stifled conversation. They camped that night with Nym sitting apart from the fire, nursing the ache in his arm and the lingering headache from the vision. Whenever Gassi looked his way, Nym stared pointedly at the horizon until the younger man looked down. The trust wasn’t broken, but it was certainly cracked.
On the third day, the rain returned.
Through the downpour, they saw a wrecked wagon by the side of the road. A man lay beside it, his body broken, his life bleeding out into the mud.
“Take it,” he rasped as they approached, holding out a small leather pouch. “Make it… in time.”
He died moments later, Zogg holding his hand and speaking quietly of better days, in an effort of comforting the dying man.
Inside the pouch was another scroll, bearing the same Aldori seal as the scroll Zogg was given at the Wounded Stag.
Zogg made to stow the scroll and cover the body with a cloak, forcing his stiff knees to straighten. He looked ready to move on, to get out of the storm, but Aurelio stood unmoving over the corpse. Rain dripped from his nose, but his eyes were fixed on the fallen stranger.
“We leave him?” Gassi asked, his voice small against the thunder.
“We do not,” Aurelio said, his voice cutting through the drumming rain. He looked at the others, his expression brokering no argument. “This man died fulfilling a duty. To leave him to the wolves and the crows would be a stain on us all. Honor demands he rests beneath the soil.”
Nym looked at the mud, then at the darkening sky, and finally at the determination in Aurelio’s face. He let out a sharp sigh, defeated. “We don’t have shovels.”
“We have hands,” Aurelio replied, already kneeling to pull a splintered plank from the wreckage of the wagon. “And we have blades.”
It was grueling, miserable work. The ground was a slurry of clay and rock, fighting them for every inch of depth. They dug in silence, using drift-wood and wagon scraps, soaked to the bone. The earlier hostility between Nym and Gassi was temporarily forgotten, buried under the immediate, shared weight of the task. When the earth finally covered the stranger, Aurelio offered a brief, silent prayer, marking the grave with a simple stone.
They moved on, mud-caked and solemn, the weight of the death hanging over them as heavy as their wet cloaks.
As dusk fell, they saw torchlight through the rain. They had arrived. Before them loomed a great manor, its windows glowing with warmth and light, a fortress against the encroaching darkness. Their strange, agonizing journey had ended.